Heaven is for Real for Kids

September 19, 2011
The bestselling book is adapted for children, which makes sense since the story involves a child, Colton Burpo, who told his parents he visited heaven during a life-threatening surgery when he was three. Heaven is filled with angels and also animals; Colton reported playing with dogs, cats, elephants, and kangaroos, and saw Jesus riding a big white horse, to which illustrator Ong gives a rainbow mane. It’s all very kid-friendly. Parents who bought and liked the adult version of the story will likely buy this for their, or someone else’s, kids; a gift inscription page is included. Ages 4–8.

This picture-book adaptation of the Burpos' 2010 account for adults of then-4-year-old Colton's near-death experience comes with a built-in audience but doesn't reach much further than it.A note to parents and grandparents precedes a two-page explanation that, during a visit to the hospital, "Colton closed his eyes, and when he opened them- / Jesus was with him!" The boy's brief sojourn in heaven is related in an ingenuous child's voice laced with exclamation marks. Readers learn that "Heaven is not scary-ever!" and that "Everyone is happy there!" He meets a number of biblical celebrities, his great-grandfather and-tellingly and horrifically-"my big sister [who] was so excited to see me that she wouldn't stop hugging me!" Several pages of description of heavenly delights follow before Jesus explains that he is "answering your dad's prayer" and returning him to this vale of tears. Children entranced by the happy animals and Michael's awesome flaming sword will feel that Colton got a very bad deal. Ong paints a supersoft-focus heaven populated by white-robed angels and a crowned Jesus. Aside from an appealingly rainbow-maned white horse and the welcome inclusion of dark-skinned angels (none of them named characters), the aesthetic is one that recalls mass-produced mid-20th-century Sunday school materials. Believers may well be charmed by Colton's close encounter; nonbelievers will suspect that Colton's account of heaven owes more to his parents' stories of his big sister's afterlife than actual experience.Is heaven for real? Maybe, but this book is not likely to persuade any skeptics. (Picture book. 4-8) COPYRIGHT(1) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

January 1, 2012
Spun off from the adult bestseller Heaven Is for Real, this pint-sized version details what three-year-old Colton experienced while being briefly dead. Heaven is apparently filled with all the wonderful things the Bible promises and more, the main point being that "Jesus really, really loves children!" The literalness of Colton's Heaven (wings, puppies, three distinct Gods) is echoed in awkwardly figured illustrations.

(Copyright 2012 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)